too good to stay too bad to stay away
by vapanalley
Summary: /collection of drabbles/ Things are complicated and will probably never be simple between Eleanor and Felton. And it's not like they will always have each other to lean on either, but they get by.
1. stay

A/N: I am so taken by these two. Ugh. I just reread the series, and these two make my heart hurt. It's kind of a repeat of Ch. 35-ish, but it was cute okay?

Disclaimer: Hana to Akuma belongs to Hisamu Oto

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><p>-Stay-<p>

Eleanor is forced to walk out of classroom—once again—with her head held as high as she can. Her curled pig tails bounce against her shoulders and she tries to make her face aloof and cold like her mother taught her. She's done with being sad and disappointed, she is simply angry now. She's a big girl, all of her fourteen years compressed into a tiny little vessel who is so, so _angry. _

Because if she's not angry, she just knows she's going to cry.

She can stand it if he teases her. She can force a smile or fake a laugh when he's ruffling her hair and telling a dirty joke she has yet to understand. She can take it all.

But she won't stand a moment of the other's and their stupid expressions as if they are trying to hold in their laughter and reflect sympathy all in a single face they want to present to her. If those were their gifts, she would smash them on the ground and grind them to dust with the heel of her boot.

Eleanor stomps down the halls and heads towards the nurse's office. The nurse is always drunk off of the strongest underground spirits that were ever brewed. She never notices when students sneak into the beds at the end of the room for some rest and relaxation.

"You made me leave class again." Eleanor says when she swings back the curtains surrounding one of the beds at the very end of the nurse's office.

"Sorry." Felton mutters. He doesn't try to use his charm on her. He just looks sheepish but the girl straddling him looks angry.

"Who's that?" She asks with a toss of her head. The curves of her breasts are obvious now that her shirt has been half-way unbuttoned. She sticks out her bottom lip and pouts at Felton in the most disgusting way. She even bats her eyelashes and then leans down towards him to snake a hand into his hair. "No one important, right?"

"That's just Eleanor. She's my fiancée." Felton says with a shrug.

"Ew, I didn't know you were into tiny girls like that." The girl says and adds another pout. She is back to just straddling Felton and she looks at Eleanor disgustedly. "She's so…short." She says in a pointed way and gives Eleanor a scathing glance like it is all Eleanor's fault that Eleanor is so short.

"Oh. Excuse me. Should I put on glamour before I come into your presence since you're so offended by _short people?_" Eleanor asks in the most venomous way she can manage. She glares.

The girl climbs off of Felton and is buttoning up her shirt as if it were an every day occurrence to be interrupted in a make out session. It just might, Eleanor thinks hatefully. She has probably realized that Eleanor's presence has called a halt to their "extracurricular activities".

"It's an arranged marriage." Felton says as he straightens his own uniform. He shoots a sparkling glance back at the girl as if he is promising something at a later date. Then he lets Eleanor kick him in the gut and drag him out into the hallway. Her hand seeks his and she squeezes as hard as she can as if she's trying to tell him to _stay_. Stay with her and just her. No one else can have him. It looks like he doesn't get the message though because he pulls back once they're half way to the classroom.

"You go ahead. I'll catch up." He says. He was never going to catch up if she didn't drag him back and they both knew it. Eleanor reaches out for his hand again but he steps back. He is faster since he has been practicing the demon dances and taken up fencing like a proper noble demon. She has seen him dance in the middle of the circle of runes on Hallows Eve and he is _beautiful_.

"No." Eleanor says stubbornly. Her cheeks puff out and she grabs for his hand again.

"Eleanor."

Every time he says her name it's a whisper. Like she is precious. But if she was so precious then why doesn't he stay? He never stays and she almost feels sad before she grows angry again. It's like the two emotions have become one and although they're bitter feelings she can feel that hopeful spark of love that blooms like the poisonous plants from her Papa brings home now.

"No." She says and she punches him. She only gets a little bit of satisfaction because she can feel him rolling back and allowing her punch to hit him but not hard enough to hurt her fist. He chooses to protect her at the strangest times.

"Come with me." Eleanor tries again.

"I can't. Don't you see?"

"No. No I don't see. Why have I seen you with almost girl in our grade yet you've never even kissed me aside from a peck on the cheek?"

"You shouldn't be around someone like me, alright. You're too _good_." Felton whispers the last words like it's a secret. Precious as her heart and just as elusive like a secret.

"What do you mean?" She can hear her own voice growing shriller with each passing minute. "Is it because I'm not pretty like the girls you grind against behind the green house? We're a race of demons for Lucifer's sake. None of us are _good_."

"No!" His voice is loud. He's never shouted at her before and Eleanor suddenly stops speaking. It feels like she's suddenly stopped breathing too. "No," he continues in a softer voice. "You're better than I am. You're…just…you're like…a rune one of the Masters has carved. You know? You're just so perfect. And I'm not. You deserve better." He finished lamely.

She's never heard him talk about any girl like that. She knows how much he admires the old masters who hole themselves up in the tallest spires of the demon world to master the archaic art of the runes. Some say the runes have been in the making since Lucifer fell from heaven. She knows better than anyone if Felton were not a noble demon he would be right up there with the masters slaving away with chalk and iron to create the most elegant and beautiful scripts in all of Hell.

"No." She says. She feels like denial is the only dance they will ever dance around each other.

"I..." And her voice is so soft that it doesn't even echo in the cavernous hall that usually catches even the smallest bat squeaking. She doesn't know what to say. But she's sure that Felton knows exactly what she means and she tries again. "I…ever since you found me in the Black Forest and how you sat with me when my mother wasted away from the Sickness and how just every time you're _there._" The last words gush out and she still can't choke out the words yet. But someday she'll say it to his face and he'll understand how much he means to her.

Felton shakes his head again but he steps forward and closes the distance between them. An arms length away and then he's hugging her so tight she thinks that they might have a single shadow as the ever burning fires outside create a light that seeps in through the closed shutters of the school building. Eleanor closes her eyes for just a moment and believes that he might stay. Maybe.

She takes his hand and he doesn't pull away. She walks towards the classroom again and he falls in step behind her. But the moment she pulls her hand away to form the hand signals through the glass of the classroom door he disappears. He just vanishes behind her without a sound.

Eleanor walks into the classroom with her head held just as high as when she walked out. Her face is just as cold and her eyes are just as hard. Her fists are still clenched and her stride is long and angry like a hunting cat. She is calm. But when someone offers her sympathy, she finally punches the demon the way she wished she had as she walked out of the classroom.

So he didn't stay. She pretended she was punching Felton instead of Cole.

She is so, so angry. She is so angry she thinks she might cry.


	2. back

-Back-

Felton doesn't even know where he is but it is a nice place. A pretty girl is in his lap and drinks are going around in this dim room. It is definitely better than any stiff party held in some dim cavern in the demon world.

The girl in his lap laughs at something someone says to her and then turns to Felton with a dark smile playing on her lips. The lights flicker and her inky hair seems to dance in the smoky air of the tavern. They whisper little nothings into each others ears just for fun and he says something about flowers and drunkards. She laughs again but this time she throws her head back to reveal a long, pale neck. The room is too loud to hear anything but the girl's gray eyes speak through her sooty lashes and she leads him to her room up two flights of stairs and down a corridor.

"Why me?" Felton asks in a parody of modesty. The girl had kissed him the moment she closed her door and the heated dance of tongues had led them to tumble onto a thin mattress. They'd kissed for a while and then the girl tried to untuck his shirt from his slacks. The sheets seem to croak under him and he notices how there is mold on the ceiling and a bowl of coins on a beat up desk

"Oh. I don't know." The girl says breathily. "Tell me you name." She whispers. She had looked pretty and confident in the darkness downstairs but now she just looked young and tired. Felton notices how her dress seems to have been mended many times and how there's a spare gray dress hanging on the back of the door. A pair of muddy boots are under the desk and then the girl muffles a cough by trying to nip at his neck. There's coal dust on the ground.

"Victor." He says on a whim.

"Well, Victor. I think it might just be because you were always there." The girl whispers. She's trying to be coy and his puts on a hand on her side to try and steady her because she had squirmed against him to try and muffle another cough. She is sick, he realizes. And then her words hit him and he suddenly pushes away from her.

He stands and straightens his clothes and grabs his coat from the floor.

"It seems as if I have some business to attend too. I just remembered. I'm sorry ma'am." He says carefully. He's careful to drop his whole pouch of gold coins into the bowl on her desk on the way out. It's all just transmuted pebbles but if she uses them in the next century or so they'll be real enough gold for a banker and by then the gold will be shuffled into the system soon enough.

Felton walks out of the tavern as quickly as he can. Fifty years is a long time to try and have a taste of all the women in the worlds Above and Below. He has been to the bright and airy saloons of France and the deepest pubs at the bottom of the tall mountains in the demon world. He feels like he has almost been everywhere. Sometimes he wonders how Eleanor has been but then he ends up thinking about graduation day at the Academy and he chops the thought to pieces.

Eleanor had successfully dragged him back to class enough times for him to scrape by on his attendance and title alone.

"You're the spitting image of your father." One of the teachers had said, partly in jest and partly in exasperation.

His womanizing, child-abandoning, crap beetle of a father acting as a reflection of him had furthered his belief that his self-worth was nothing. So he'd flirted with all the granddaughters of the Elders to get demoted to baron so he could have some free time to go find out more by himself. He ended up deciding that fifty years of womanizing seemed like the best way to solve his problems and that's how he ended up walking on slippery cobblestones on this wet Monday and getting sprayed by passing horse drawn carriages.

He muttered angrily and walked into the nearest newspaper stand. He charmed the girl selling the papers into letting him see the date and figured that forty-nine years and three months was close enough to half a century for him to make his way back to Below.


End file.
